


Amity in May

by spinshivers



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, DannyMay (Danny Phantom), DannyMay 2020, Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 11,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23997421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinshivers/pseuds/spinshivers
Summary: Amity Park is really weird, but it's in its weirdness that there are stories to tell. 31 drabbles written forDannyMay 2020.
Relationships: Danny Fenton/Valerie Gray
Comments: 4
Kudos: 57





	1. eyes - Danny, Sam

**Author's Note:**

> reorganised from a few drabbles per chapter to one per chapter for easier navigation. sorry to my subscribers if you receive multiple emails :')
> 
> all drabbles are canon compliant and each stands on its own. main characters of each chapter are found together with the chapter titles. all are gen, unless a ship is specified in the title.

Sam's brush curved a cool, damp streak under Danny’s left eye, and her even breaths warmed his cheeks. That soothed him, so he dared not blink or ask her what she was creating.

She pulled away. The air-conditioner blew its gentle gush into his face and goosebumps prickled along his arms, bare in the black singlet she had picked for him. She reached out, placing fingers under his chin and tilting his face to meet her own. 

A hum passed her lips. “What do you think?” Stepping away, she gestured towards the mirror before him. “Operation Spooky a success?”

He turned towards his reflection. On the left side of his head, Sam’s thin purple pins flattened his silver hair against his skull. Red ink cut a mask of roses next to his ectoplasmic green eye, blossoming across his cheekbone.

He huffed a laugh. The being in the mirror followed, unpainted lips stretching to reveal rows of white teeth, and his gaze slid towards the satisfied smile on Sam’s face.

“If you mean, did you successfully turn me into a voodoo doll?" he asked. "Then yes."

She jabbed her brush in his face, its tip shiny with red. “Not voodoo doll. Art. And you agreed to this, so no backing out now.”

He rolled his eyes. His half-mask of roses shifted with the motion. “Y’know, they asked specifically for _Phantom.”_

“Where’s the fun in that?” she argued. “It’s Halloween. We gotta up the creepiness.”

“You mean ghostliness.”

“Same difference.” A palm smacked the crown of his head, digging into the mop of hair and turning his startled eyes back towards their reflection. She leaned her face close, so they were cheek to cheek, an inch apart. In the mirror, he watched the gleam in her purple eyes, the wicked smile across her lips. 

“Now,” she murmured. “Don’t move. Let me do the other half.”

Her hand against his scalp held him in place. He acquiesced.

**\- Prompt 1: Eyes**


	2. pink orchids - Sam, Pamela

“Gardening is a fucking joke," said Sam, as she stomped around the greenhouse in her yellow sundress.

Pamela sucked in a breath, snagging her ten-year-old's upper arm with a gloved hand. The other was wrapped around a watering pail.

“Sammykins–" her voice rose to a hair below a snap " _–please,_ watch your language!”

From the petite lobes of the woman’s ears, diamond earrings swung. They cast glittering shadows across her flamingo-pink dress, and Sam was reminded of the chandeliers that loomed over the ballrooms of high society functions, the ballrooms she was forced to dress up in, where she played the beautiful heiress of the Mansons’ empire.

Rage clawed at her throat, and she wrenched her limb free. “It is! You won’t give me money for the fundraiser but you’ll spend it on useless plants?”

Sam’s fingers trembled as they gripped the stem of a young orchid. It sat among a gaggle of ornate flowers she couldn’t name, but their petals were pink-toned and plentiful. They sprouted from a ceramic pot etched with serpents, which circled its circumference like guardians, sitting still and pretty on a raised flower bed.

“Now, now,” her mother was saying. “Don’t you– no, Sammy–”

A sharp tug ripped the orchid out. It hung from her grip, stem snapped and roots limp. Water dripped off the petals, splattering onto the soil at their feet.

“Samantha,” whispered Pamela, watching her pretty daughter slam the twisted stalk against the gravel and grind it beneath her sneakers. Soil and dust kicked into the air, latching onto Sam's sundress. 

Pamela’s eyes were wide with sorrow, and her hand wavered before her child's shaking shoulders. “Darling,” she said, “at least don’t ruin your clothes.”

**\- Prompt 2: Flowers**


	3. reflection - Dani

“Tie your hair up for a bit.”

“Why?”

“Just do it. There– there! Wait, lemme take a picture, you could totally pass for a boy.”

“Ugh, fuck off.”

“Aw c’mon. Even your name is a boy’s name, like _Danny–”_

“It’s not and I didn’t choose it, so fuck off!”

“Wow, didn’t your Daddy ever teach you not to swear– ow, bitch! When my Mom hears about this she’s gonna throw you back into the streets and you’ll be dead, you hear me? _Dead!”_

**\- Prompt 3: Reflection**


	4. arm on the desk - Vlad

Anesthetic was an option, but his bank account balance was approaching a dangerous low. This went beyond what over-the-counter meds could handle anyway, so he wasn’t sure why the thought flickered through his mind. These considerations no longer suited him.

His free hand reached under the table to ensure the duck tape was firm, cursing as the furniture rocked on uneven legs. 

He would own a proper desk someday. A smooth, rosewood writing desk, one that didn’t shake with every hypothesis and test result he penciled into his notebook, one that wasn’t patched together by the same roll of tape he had used to secure his left arm against its scratched-up surface.

It was a nonsensical dream. A dream that, realistically, would slip from the grasps of his confidence as quickly as his body tended to slip into the flooring beneath his feet. 

God, he should have prepared better. He would sink through the plastic chair, sink through the floor into the neighbor’s apartment. The table he owned now, it would be ruined, drenched by the blood of his foolishness, and he would have to start with nothing, all over again, all by himself–

He dragged in a breath, letting it rattle in his lungs. He held it, cradled it against his heart, which thumped against his chest. His right hand hovered over the towel laid out in front of him, and on it the equipment glinted under the ceiling’s fluorescent light. Swiped from the college labs, they had been wiped down with alcohol. This he had remembered, at least.

 _I need to understand._ He wound an invisible fist around that thought.

Vlad flattened his left palm against the desk; with his right he picked up the scalpel. He laid its tip against the skin of his forearm and, letting go of his breath in a steady stream of air, dug the blade into his flesh.

**\- Prompt 4: Science**


	5. lunar - Wulf

The lunar cycle lived on in the human world, thus it could not exist in the realm of the dead. In his cell – built for the smaller, average ghost and was thus just wide enough for him to lay down – time was defined by the wait in between Walker’s calls for his pet dog. 

_My pet dog. Privileged prisoner. Prized beast._ The warden liked these words, liked to roll them with his tongue, and watch for minute changes in the wolf's expression.

Wulf regretted reacting so freely to them early in his term. While he no longer growled and swore, he had already given away the fact that such reactions were possible; it enticed Walker to intersperse those names in between his demands to track down a prisoner or open a portal. They made Wulf’s fur stand on edge, the muscles in his throat tense, the collar like a leash tightening around his neck.

But no matter how much he despised the warden, the man invaded his mind. His visits bespoke of pain – _but only if you act out of hand, pet_ – and the regret of acting on his orders – _another wayward soul that needs to be taught how things work around here, but they’ll learn as you have, won’t they?_ – but how long had he been here? Wulf had forgotten how many years his prison term was supposed to last and he did not possess the language to ask.

Time ran together without the guidance of the moon, until his existence could only be stitched together by his memories of words in his ear.

**\- Prompt 5: Moon**


	6. dumb boys - Danny, Tucker

“Ten bucks.”

“No.” Danny plucked two notes from the wallet. “Twenty. And if anything goes wrong,  _ you’re  _ calling Sam.”

“What? That’s daylight robbery!” 

“You’re the one who thought this was a good idea,” said Danny as he set the wallet and its liberated contents on his bedroom floor. Ignoring Tucker’s humph, he focused his breathing. Inhaled a long, calming gush of air, exhaled it all out– then panic crossed his face. “D’you think it’s easier in ghost form?”

Tucker groaned. 

“Crud, crud, hold on. Going ghost!” A flash of light passed over them. “Okay.” Danny said this a few more times, before finally: “Wait, should I take my boot out? No, forget it. I’m putting my foot in.” He grit his teeth. “It’s... it’s in!” 

“You’re acting like you’ve never done this before.”

“But it’s always stayed intangible.” He did not squeak. “It’s gonna be different this time. Oh my God, oh God, hold my hand.” 

Tucker, the true friend he was, sighed and grudgingly complied. 

Danny shut his eyes and turned his foot, which he had sunk into the wooden floor up to his ankle, tangible. It felt as if the flesh below ground were pressured by an unforgiving substance. He didn’t want to move it, but he had to keep his word in exchange for the twenty, so he twitched his leg upwards. His muscles tensed; his foot refused to budge. “Gah!”

“What? There’s no blood, right? Oh, thank God.” Tucker pushed his glasses up his nose and shuffled forward. “So it does hurt? I was right?”

“Of course it hurts, it– wait. Wait, no, it doesn’t. You’re wrong!” Danny threw his head back and cackled, reaching for the cash and sliding it in his jeans pocket. “This money is  _ mine _ . Time to pull this out and– ohh, crap.” 

He stared at the boot he had phased out of the floor. Outwardly, it was unblemished, but when he tugged at its sole, it wouldn’t budge from his leg. “Crud,” he whispered, and tried to turn only his limb intangible. His whole boot phased out of the human realm with it. He strained to wiggle his toes, but... “There– there’s like, something hard in my shoe. I can’t move my toes. Tuck!”

_ “Dude." _

"What? A little busy here–"

Tucker pointed at the floor. Danny followed his gaze and let out a cry.

There was a deep hole, shaped like a boot. It dug past the wooden flooring and into the cement below. White dust lay scattered about the floorboard, like flour dusting on cake.

“I’m just glad we didn’t do this in my room,” said Tucker, getting to his feet. 

“Wait, where are you–”

His friend snagged his wallet off the floor and fled the room. “Keep the cash but I ain’t calling Sam!” 

_ “Tucker!” _

**\- Prompt 6: Stuck**


	7. patchwork - Danny, Jazz

She was not privy to the gory details of her brother’s duel with his future self, but his attitude towards Vlad Masters lost its edge in the following months. 

“I just thought he should have a second chance,” he said, wrapping gauze around a gash on his shin, after Jazz had helped with the disinfection. “The froot loop deserves to have his house burned down and be mocked off the Internet but not, like, never forgiven.”

“He did this to you.”

Danny rolled his jeans down over the white bandages. Not a speck of red stained the denim, and Jazz was gripped with an irrational terror; it looked too much like a normal pant leg.

“C’mon,” he said. He was all smiles, shoulders relaxed. “I’ve taken worse hits.”

“I’m just glad you came to me.” From where the two were gathered on her bed, she pulled the first-aid kit to her – picking up the scissors, rolling up the gauze, stuffing them into their compartments in the box, where they belonged.

The alcohol swabs were haphazardly strewn in its container. She pressed them back into position, into a neat little cube of compressed packets, and her fingers were tucking in the corners, aligning them.  _ This'll be messed up within the week, _ her mind whispered.

_ Compulsive behavior, _ she noted, and removed her hands from the first aid box. Steadily, she said, “I know he helped you fight your alternate self–" Danny winced, but she needed him to know, needed her brother to understand “–but you've got to remember this is a different timeline.”

“He’s still Vlad.”

“Without the ten years," she countered. "Without losing everything he ever loved.”

His own gaze was fierce, a Fenton’s stubbornness reflected in her own. She steeled her heart and continued, “ _ You _ know how much that can change a person.” 

Danny’s shoulders hunched. It was imperceptible, but he couldn’t hide from his sister.

“That’s low,” he muttered.

“But I’m right.”

“I’m doing it for me too, okay? Now I know he  _ can  _ be good, I can’t keep pretending it’s gonna be the same, even if the old man doesn’t know anything.” He jerked to his feet, snatching the first-aid kit before her and snapping it shut. Then he bent and chucked it under the bed frame, where it would hide until either of them remembered its necessity.

“And I’m not asking you to be right or even understand," he said to her bed, instead of to her face. "I just want you to help me.”

Before Jazz could answer, he turned away, bit out a ‘see ya’ and disappeared through the door. 

**\- Prompt 7: Second chance**


	8. existential - Danny, Wes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to ceciliaspen who drew lovely [art](https://dannymayevent.tumblr.com/post/621837566909530112/congratulations-spinwrites-for-completing) for this as a prize for completing dannymay :)

“Look who’s talking! Are you even real?”

Wes lowered his camera. “Now you’re makin’ no sense–”

“‘Cause at least my only purpose in existence isn’t tied to someone else!” Danny pushed past him towards the Nasty Burger. “So until you act like an actual person, can you please get lost?” 

Before Wes could answer, the diner’s doors swung shut. Light peeked out from the gap beneath the entrance, and the chatter within was muted, quiet. He stood at the parking lot, frowning into the camera in his hands. The pictures in it were supposed to be damning, once and for all.

“Am I real?” he asked. The camera did not reply.

**\- Prompt 8: Lost**


	9. aglow - Danny/Valerie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: fluff !!!
> 
> and special thanks to [Alexa_Piper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexa_Piper/pseuds/Alexa_Piper) for beta-ing <3

Amity Park Observatory exuded a well-loved warmth. For a child, it was a sweet memory with family; for a professor, a harried moment in a meeting. 

For Valerie Gray, it was an epiphany.

Her date navigated the hallways, the map she had pilfered from the ticketing entrance dangling between his fingers. Not once did he refer to it. His confident gait and relaxed shoulders told her he must have walked this route dozens of times before.

How often had she stared at his tense, slumped back in Casper High’s corridors?

“Right, so we turn here.” He stopped before a set of heavy doors, the word ‘PLANETARIUM’ shining on the panel above it. When he pushed a door open, a slant of cool light illuminated the delight on his face. “Come on! The show’s about to start.”

Anticipation curled in her chest. It was infectious, she thought, his delight. “How many times  _ have  _ you seen this?”

“Uh.” His brows furrowed, and he went nearly cross-eyed. Valerie struggled not to smile. “I came here last year. Three times? Maybe... I dunno. I lost count.” His sheepish grin broke her composure and she laughed, a full belly one. “Hey! I really like this place.”

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing,” she soothed, as they made their way towards the empty seats in the center.

There was something about the way he spoke. His eyebags remained, but gone was his stutter in class, the duck of his head. Under the half-light of the planetarium, he enthused about the constellations they could catch through the observatory’s telescopes later. He could talk the guys running it into giving longer tours, he promised, since he was bringing someone new. His parents used to visit with him and his friends before high school began, though their interest waned and eventually, only he remained.

“It’s not as fun to wander by yourself,” he admitted, “when you’ve already seen everything here.”

His tone was light, but Valerie heard its undercurrent of melancholy. After all, when her father lost his job, she, too, had wandered the school’s corridors on her own.

“I get it,” she said.

The planetarium dimmed its lights. Danny’s complexion changed then, a blush dusting his cheeks. “I– I bet we could see Venus later,” he stammered.

In their proximity, she noticed his freckles, like stardust across his nose. They were reminiscent of the constellations he loved.

“And, um,” he pressed on, and his gaze did not stray from on her own, “did you know Venus is also the Roman goddess of–”

“–love, yes,” she finished. Her hand sought out his, and their fingers intertwined. His lips twitched, lifting into a shy and beatific smile. He was so carefree with his affection, his embarrassment, that she let her heart be swallowed by it, and communicated this with a squeeze to his palm.

It was cool, calloused. She wanted to learn why, to trace the hills and valleys of his skin, to learn all there was to know about Danny Fenton, and prayed she could. Someday, but until then, she was content to hold his hand.

Above, the domed ceiling began to shimmer, lighting up with the stars of the Milky Way.

**\- Prompt 9: Glow**


	10. crush - Paulina

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i rly wanted a bit more depth into paulina's character that still remained canon-compliant, but the most memorable part about her from the show (beyond the queen bee/preppy girl personality that she got stereotyped into...) was her being a big fan of danny phantom, so this drabble tries to explain that

Paulina was not shy about her attraction. Phantom was hot; death a flimsy barrier against a girl’s admiration of masculinity. Why should it stop her? She lived in Amity Park, and the world treated life’s other truths with more indifference than it did her spectrophilic crush.

She said as such to her girls. Those who agreed shared her traipses to hot spots for stolen glimpses of Phantom’s conquests; others knew better than to let their gossip reach her ears. 

Phantom was different. He was not like  mamá , who on weekends visited another man an hour out of the city; he was not like  papá , who preferred to appear through the digits in her bank book every month. He was not like Dash, who cooed at her with an arm around her waist yet opened his heart for muddy football fields and his brothers-in-arms. 

Phantom held her in his arms, swung her out of falling beams, shielded her body from debris with his own. He defended her from the monsters swarming her school the way  mamá  and  papá  never defended her from the monsters under her bed – somehow always there, always on time. The last time Dash had arrived early for their date had been months ago. In a cheap diner, and afterwards he had kissed her with oily lips and encompassing hands. 

She was willing to accept that the ghost boy was not a hero for her. He did it because he was just that, just good, and that was why Paulina was not shy about her love.

**\- Prompt 10: Corruption**


	11. youth - Spectra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: true therapists do not act like this

“Perhaps it was a test. You said she loves you, but experience can sharpen a woman’s fangs.” Under the white light of the office, her crow’s-feet deepened as she smiled with a little teeth. She pitched her voice soft and low, sympathetic. “Did she have any lovers before you?”

“No,” muttered her patient. “No. Kitty’s– I’m the only one, ever since before we... we, uh...”

“Crashed in your motorcycle accident?”

“Jeez, lady, don’t say it like that.” Johnny slunk back into the couch, blonde hair curtaining his eyes. It did not shield the storm of emotions brewing in his head.

“It’s like ripping off a band-aid,” she replied, savoring her breath. “You two haven’t been dead long, have you?”

“What? How’d you know?”

“You seemed unsure when I brought up your deaths. That’s typically a sign of a young ghost.”

Pale eyes turned to her, set in a gaunt face scarred with acne from a past life. “Do I really look, uh, inexperienced?”

“We’ve all been there at some point,” she soothed. Was it just her, or was the sagginess in her cheeks smoothening, tightening? Desire broiled hot and ravenous in her stomach, compelling her to take a leap, to land the final blow. This child had to be a repeat customer, he  _ had  _ to. “It’s alright if you are, dear,” she murmured, dipping into a croon, “and it’s alright if Kitty doesn’t like that. It just means you two must work past it. That’s the first step towards overcoming an uncertain relationship, even if the two of you are dead!”

The session ended too soon. “Shall we bring your girlfriend for our next appointment?” she asked, and her smile broadened when he agreed. 

When he stepped out of her lair, the air of insecurity left with him, as if a warm blanket had been stolen from a body in winter. Spectra shivered. Pulling out a pocket mirror from her skirt, she patted her skin and frowned. 

“He barely made a dent,” Bertrand said from behind her. 

The mirror snapped closed. “Finally slunk out of your hole, haven’t you?” 

“No need to hiss at me,” he said. She didn’t have to turn around to see the smirk splitting his face. “As you’ve said, we gotta rip off the band-aid.”

**\- Prompt 11: Doctor**


	12. gloved - Dani, Vlad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i rly love dani and the potential she has omgyosh

When she was three months old she pulled off her gloves to see what they hid. She flew to Daddy to show him her left hand, but she could not understand the expression that crossed his face when he grasped her wrinkled, leathery palm. The scars marring the skin made it look small and funny between his rough but unmarked hands.

“What did you do to yourself?” he asked. He ran a thumb across the dips and bumps.

It tickled, but the contact filled an itch. She held back from melting into it, content with memorizing this touch. “Nothing! How come I have this?”

Pulling away, Daddy told her to read another chapter of Mathematics. She sulked in her room but had to do it; experience taught her answers were granted only when Daddy was ready. Plus, she wanted to get into NASA.

Two months later, she learned the truth about what she was. One month later, she was helping her father lock her unconscious cousin’s wrists in cuffs. The man turned the boy’s left palm over, hidden by his glove.

This time, she understood his expression. It approximated regret.

**\- Prompt 12: Glove**


	13. holo bond - Vlad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some vlad angst because there is never enough content on vlad angst

“Don’t ‘eave me.” Apologies slurred through his wine-addled mind, but his tongue could not shape them, release them to the person who mattered. “Don’t.” Hunched over his desk, he cupped the disc in his palms, fumbling for its buttons. “Come back. Come–”

Fingers found the ON switch. Pressing it sent a fountain of tiny, teal-tinted hexagons bursting into existence before him. They reached for each other, sliding into place, seams and edges slotting against their partners’ – as if they experienced the attraction between magnets of opposite ends.

When they solidified, a woman came to life.

Hair the color of fall, cascading round her face, atop a body in tight blue hazmat that left little to his imagination. He thought of old royalty when he looked into her eyes – a gateway into a mind of intelligence, fierceness. Who could have a mind like hers? Who dared meet it without offering a part of their own, a part of their soul?

“Good evening, darling!” she said. Her mouth was petite, a perfect Cupid’s bow. “I’ve missed you.”

“Me too,” he managed. The anxiety within him retracted its tendrils, slithering back into the cavities of his heart. Breathing came easier now, and the words stumbled out before they turned formless on his tongue. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I love you.”

A hand reached for his cheek. He almost felt it, her caress.

“What are you sorry for?” Her form fizzled, sending a lick of terror up his chest, but it returned, outline defined and firmly opaque. “I love you, too,” admitted Maddie. She whispered it like it was a secret they shared, and Vlad had never felt more grateful. 

**\- Prompt 13: Regret**


	14. ally - Danny, GIW

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you [Alexa_Piper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexa_Piper/pseuds/Alexa_Piper) for beta-ing!

It wasn’t K and O today.

“Where’re the usual lackeys?” Phantom called, eyeing the two agents. Unsteady flight patterns, crooked holsters, white-knuckled grips on their guns. Dark, dorky sunglasses covered their faces, but Phantom placed them as newbies in their early twenties. “Finally got KO-ed from the frontlines?”

Laughter bubbled from one of the agents, surprising the ghost. The other guy, following behind, snapped at his partner. Undeterred, the latter shouted, a building’s width between them: “They fell sick so they’re not okay!”

“Ooh.” Phantom chuckled. It wasn’t often that these agents played. “Both of them? Man, how the heck did–”

A crack split the air. Pain exploded in Phantom’s arm, ectoplasm spraying in an arc, splattering onto the roads far below. “Shit,” he gasped, palm pressed over the wound. He caught sight of the chatty agent’s smoking gun, his glasses glinting in the afternoon sun. 

He took off. The rumble of the agents’ jetpacks upped into a roar as they followed suit. But the backstreets of Amity Park were Phantom’s stomping ground, and irritation with a surge of pettiness had him diving into the alleyways.

Within seconds, the agents stumbled. Staying below the rooftops, they couldn’t predict the next turn he would take. One agent was lost after a corner. Phantom risked a glance; the remaining guy was the one who talked to him to shoot him. His flying sucked, so if Phantom just kept this up–

A shout broke his train of thought.

Phantom spun around, just in time to watch the agent catch onto a corner, hurtle towards the ground. A crack resounded. The man rolled and left red streaking in his wake, and then he landed – face-down, limbs splayed.

Like an abruptly muted television, the alley fell into silence.

“Hey,” whispered Phantom. Wetness trailed the pavement in spades, and he couldn’t look away from the unmoving body at its end. With a twist of his hips, he landed next to the man.

Blood coated the agent’s right arm, torn flesh and bone stark under the ripped sleeve. He shuddered and moaned when cautious hands pressed on his shoulders, helped him roll onto his back and sit up. His good arm reached up, pulling shattered glasses off his nose, letting them clatter onto the tarmac.

Parts of his skin above his eyes were darker. Phantom noticed with a lurch in his heart that they were glass shards, from the man’s shades. Without them, the tears smeared across his scratched cheek were visible – and pink, dripping off a gashed chin onto the white suit he wore.

The agent registered who was before him and jerked away. His frightened eyes flickered towards where his gun lay within arm’s reach to his left. 

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Phantom protested. At their proximity he could see the man’s pupils dilate, gasps wrenched out of him by the pain of his ruined arm. The blood on the tarmac was browning from oxygen, its scent metallic and overpowering.

_ Your fault. _ The thought came, unwelcome, and burrowed into his mind. _ You led them on an unnecessary chase. _

At his worst, even his own injuries in human form had not been this severe. How fast did this man heal? Would he scar? Recover?

“I’m sorry,” Phantom blurted, voice shaky, “I– I shouldn’t have...”

The man didn’t seem to hear him, his breaths coming in quick. Phantom knelt, helpless, as the man hunched over, pulling his arm to his stomach, his other hand to his chest. Fingers clutched and yanked at the fabric, and he was wheezing, choking.

“Crap.” Phantom flattened a hand against the agent’s back, trying to straighten it. “Breathe, breathe with me. Deep breath, hold it,” he pleaded, Jazz’s words surfacing from memory. He wasn’t sure what else he could do, and rubbed circles in the man’s back. “Let it out, right, that’s right.” 

It took them minutes, but the man calmed, shivering and staring at a point between them.

Phantom’s consciousness screamed.  _ Look at the gun on the ground, look at the jetpack on his back! _

The agent didn’t move. The ghost wrung his hands. Ectoplasm trickled from his own wound, but the throbbing in his arm had already dulled to an ache. “We gotta get you to the hospital–” 

“Evans will come for me,” the man cut in.

Phantom startled at his voice, which was quieter than his laughter in the air, and opened his mouth to object. The agent lifted his head, captured his gaze. Wariness swam in his brown eyes, but they were resolute.

“R-right,” said the ghost, getting up. “Okay.”

He took to the air, but when he was high enough he was compelled to look back.

A mere bloodied form, the agent remained in the alley, shielded by the shadows of the buildings. He had stretched out his legs and shut his eyes, his head tilted towards the sky.

**\- Prompt 14: Breathe**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's a little more to taking responsibility with one's powers than not cheating in a test or not playing pranks on school bullies, i think, though whether it's healthy for danny to feel responsible is probably something he must decide on his own


	15. loopy - Danny, Vlad

After the portal accident, his dreams took on a different turn. That made sense. His life had changed, his experiences now flavored with danger and the dead. 

When he cracked his eyes open, the wisps of his dream dissipated. Danny slid out of bed, feet appreciating the plush rug laid across the floorboards. The analog clock on his nightstand ticked to a quarter past seven.

It was Saturday. He knew that without a doubt, so he brushed his teeth, showered and pulled on a polo shirt and jeans before making his way into the kitchen. Midway through pouring cereal into his bowl, a voice called out.

“Ready for training later?”

Cereal sprayed across the counter top. Danny gasped, righting the box, fingers denting the cardboard. His palm cupped the mess before it fell off the edge, but several Froot Loops scattered onto the floor, bouncing off the linoleum.

Froot Loops.

A floodgate opened in his mind. Danny turned to the speaker, horror pooling in his gut.

Vlad was leaning against the door frame of the kitchen. Arms relaxed against his sides, amusement on his face. But it wasn’t the nasty sort; it wasn’t the sneer he wore whenever he gripped Danny around the throat, spat a mockery at his father, dangled his friends’ lives like morsels before a starving rabbit–

“Son?” Vlad was suddenly two feet away. Danny’s limbs froze, held hostage by revulsion and an odd, disturbing compulsion to bridge the distance between them, to press his arms around him in a hug. The man’s eyes – blue, kind – seared into him. “Are you alright?” 

Danny opened his mouth and–

His eyes cracked open. A familiar ceiling, devoid of light, gazed back at him and for a second, he was convinced he had awoken in another dream. Sensation crawled back to his limbs, sweat pooling between cold skin and thin pajamas. He sat up, swung his legs out of bed, and felt the bare floorboards beneath his feet.

The clock on his nightstand blinked 04:30. ‘Tuesday’, it wrote in unwavering letters, red and glaring like a reprimand. His hands wiped at his face. They came away wet.

_ Are you alright? _ murmured his mind. But a paranoid glance around confirmed he was the sole occupant of his room. In FentonWorks, Amity Park.

He dragged himself into the living room downstairs, set the fan speed to the maximum and sunk into the couch. Before exhaustion pulled him under, the remnants of nausea churned in his stomach, alongside another emotion he couldn’t name.

**\- Prompt 15: Favorite AU**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE OTHER THING I REALLY LOVE apart from dani's angst, and vlad's angst, is the _daniel masters au omg hrngsdasdk_ and my self-imposed attempt at keeping these 31 dannymay entries canon compliant is NOT stopping me from writing about this au


	16. puppy love - Sam, Cujo

In a house like hers, any scrap of genuine attention watered her soul. 

“Heel! Oh,  _ who’s  _ a good boy?”

While her soul connected solely with animals of the feline nature, Sam had to admit attention from a dead, hyperactive pup fit right into her aesthetic. Cujo had braved a journey into the treacherous human world for his beloved Danny Phantom, but her friend had been called away to bear witness to one of his parents’ inventions and could not confirm if he would be rendered out of sorts for the rest of the day.

“Help me watch him,” he had begged, and Sam had agreed because she liked having her best friend-cum-crush in her debt.

Now? She would dog-sit whenever he wanted, no strings attached. Danny didn’t know what he was missing out on.

Cujo licked a wet stripe up her face when she got close. She kissed him on his luminescent nose, waved a decimated chicken wing above her head – she tried not to dwell on it, but Cujo had ignored all her fruits and vegetables while whining in hunger; they sat abandoned in a bowl on her desk, wafting her room with the sweetness of apples and celery – and called, “Get it, boy!”

The pup leapt at her with the force of an ex-guard dog. Sam nearly cracked her head against her floor, but she didn’t mind – despite the drawn curtains and locked door, her bedroom overflowed with the sound of soulful laughter and echoing barks.

**\- Prompt 16: Bones**


	17. we sat on the wall - Tucker

As Humpty Dumpty had tumbled from his peak and split, so too, had Dumpty Humpty after years of topping the charts. The bassist’s midlife crisis had him running off to another state to begin anew. This set off the fall-out of the band. 

Tucker and his best friends commemorated its end at the Nasty Burger, toasting to half a decade of alt rock that had accompanied them throughout middle school. They crowded around his iPod for a nostalgic hit, then two, before surrendering to the compulsion of singing along. Their impromptu karaoke went unappreciated, and after the trio was booted out of the joint, it ceased. That was the end of it.

The friends split at the junction outside – Sam headed for a record store to drown her sorrows in new artistes, Danny headed home to catch up on sleep before the next ghost fight. Tucker watched their retreating backs, a lingering tune in his head.

It morphed into an unwanted thought: was their friendship a Humpty Dumpty?

That night, his scripts scoured the Internet. While they ran, he clicked on fan theory after fan theory, flicked through forum after forum, and allowed the laments of those left behind by the iconic band to swallow him whole. There was more to the story, no doubt, but the rumors abound revealed no truths about what had transpired behind the scenes. 

His code returned nothing, their conclusions no better than the gossip from celebrity magazines. 

Would their friendship be a Humpty Dumpty?

Huddled on his chair, Tucker could find no answer, his iPod crooning lullabies of rock just past its time.

**\- Prompt 17: Childhood**


	18. in limbo - Danny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for a little dead body description! seeing a ghost does not equate to seeing a dead body, methinks
> 
> edit: bless Rhiannon for catching my grammar mistakes hehe

“Do you want to see the body?”

Her tone lacked inflection, her demeanor professional, but Danny had lived under adults for fourteen years. The faint furrow of her forehead, the minute clench of her jaw, her unfaltering gaze on his face – he recognized variations of these tells in his parents, in Jazz, even in Mr. Lancer on Danny’s worst days.

_I can’t believe I still look like a kid in ghost form._

He steeled his shoulders and plastered a grim smile. Floating inches above the tarmac leveled them, eye to eye. “Ghost-related problems are my specialty, ma’am,” he replied, earnest. “I wanna help if I can.”

The police officer relented. She led him into the heart of the scene, cordoned off by yellow-black tape and officers who warded away nosy cameras and curious eyes. A hint of gratification coiled in his gut at being granted special treatment, before shame soured and consumed it.

 _Fenton, that’s unheroic,_ he told himself, until he floated before the body.

The officer had briefed him: a suicide, from the window of a middle-aged man’s sixth-floor apartment. The police department wouldn’t have approached the local ghost if not for the vials of ectoplasm raided from his kitchen, alongside notebooks scrawled with diagrams and incomprehensible writing. The Fentons were to come by later to decode them, but that wasn’t what the police needed him for.

Draped in a white tarp, the man lay prostrate on the pavement.

 _Dead_ , the thought came, visceral and curdling, and Danny stopped in his tracks. 

The smell hit him. Metallic and festering, as though blood had pooled on his tongue and clogged his nostrils. There were dark splatters unconcealed by the tarp, and slumps of the body were sloping inwards in places a human could not. 

“Phantom?” 

“R-right.” He forced his eyes to her own. 

They scrutinized him, and sweat broke out beneath his jumpsuit. “Are you getting anything from him?” the officer asked. Then quietly, “You don’t need to look to do this, is that right?” 

_I can handle it._

He couldn’t get the words out; they were a thick cloth in his throat. His ghost sense did not go off, so he drifted closer, heart thudding from his desire to shy away. He shut his eyes instead, and steadied his breaths - _ignore the blood, ignore her stare_ \- to clear his mind. Tendrils of his consciousness extended, flicked against entities in his proximity.

A dog whined from its mangled throat and trampled lungs. A bald, bony child peered at them with curious eyes. The way these ghosts passed were etched on their spiritual forms the way leathery scars marred his left palm and right foot, but never had he been there for their deaths, their reformation into ghosts, apart from his own.

Would this man be his first? 

He gave it time, stretching his senses as far as he could, uncertain if he was hoping for a ghost to form. Time dragged by and he could not tell if it were minutes or seconds, but he came to the uneasy realization that there would be no new ghost today. Weighed down by the officer’s gaze, Danny opened his eyes.

“I’m not sensing anything from him,” he admitted.

The officer heaved a sigh. “So the Fentons were right.”

At Danny’s jerk of his head, she smiled with apology, but her steady expression showed little repentance. “It’s nothing personal,” she said. “We wanted to corroborate their findings, but we didn’t want to cloud your conclusions. The Fentons came by earlier, and they suspected he” – she inclined her head at the angel-white tarp – “was running experiments at home.”

“Experiments?”

“With the ectoplasm. From all the writing he’s left behind, we think he’s hoping he could become a ghost when he died. Looks like it didn’t work.”

 _I get it,_ he wanted to say, but he didn’t, not fully. Was it a good thing the man had failed? 

The officer thanked him for his service, before escorting him away from the scene. Danny tried to picture it, but he could not imagine what sort of life the man had lived, nor could he imagine where the man was now.

**\- Prompt 18: Horror**


	19. door - Vlad, Maddie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> always wondered what it'd been like for vlad in those years after his portal accident

The visit began as the previous three had, but today, Vlad said, “I think there’s something wrong with me.”

“What sort of wrong?” Maddie pulled up a folding chair next to his hospital bed, setting the thermos of chicken soup on the nightstand nearby as she offered him a steaming bowl of it. “Did the doctor say there were new developments?”

“No, no.” As usual, he accepted the meal between a pair of bony hands. His face, scarred and blistered, lifted and his gaze met hers. “This...” 

There was hesitation clouding his eyes, and she bit her lip. Vlad was a man of action; not one for dilly-dallying about his words. “This?” 

“This is different. Not–” He cut himself off, eyes flickering to something behind her. “I–”

“What?” She turned around, following his gaze towards the corner of his ward.

There was nothing there, except for a potted plant. It was a type of palm, about the height of a child, yellowing leaves stretching towards the floor. Pallid. Probably needed more sunlight.

“The plant?”

“No– nothing,” stammered Vlad, and Maddie looked back at him and saw he had turned pale. It gave his gaunt face a shrivelled appearance. “I saw– thought– I must’ve been cooped up here for too long.”

She wanted to push, but she looked at the bags beneath his eyes, heavy and dark. “Must be.” She tried to smile. “You’ll be out in no time, don’t worry.” She reached a hand over, intending to put a comforting palm over his, still wrapped around the cup. But before her fingers brushed his, he shivered.

The cup slipped from his hands, toppling onto the white blanket covering his lap. 

“Shit,” he said, scrambling to right it, but the yellow stain was growing, spreading, unable to stop, even as he lifted the blanket from him. Maddie plucked tissue from the box on the nightstand and pressed them to his lap, covering the smear on his hospital gown. “I must have grown clumsy too.”

Maddie chuckled. “That’s okay.” She patted his hand, chilled from the air-conditioning, without incident this time. “There’s the rest of the soup in the thermos, for you to practice. I...”

He looked at her, eyebrows raised. There were so many things she wanted to tell him, but visitation hours were ending. “I’ll have to get going soon,” she said, and stood. “I’ll let the nurses know about changing the sheets. Jack and I, uh, we have something to tell you too. So next week, you let us know what’s going on with you, and we’ll let you know what we’ve been up to, okay?”

That brought a smile to his face. A tired one, but genuine. “A trade? Is that how this friendship works?”

“‘Course. The best sort.”

She bid her goodbyes. As the door closed behind her, she looked forward to next week, when she would finally get to tell him she and Jack were engaged.

**\- Prompt 19: Doors**


	20. sky - Danny, Maddie

“I’m telling you now, sweetie. This isn’t right.” 

Danny turned over his clenched fist. Peeking out of it was a feather, soft and silvery and the length of his pinky. His palm wasn’t the size of Dad’s or even Jazz’s, but it engulfed this feather like a giant.

Did it have feelings? Maybe it felt the same as he did, standing under the shadow of Mom.

“I saw Dash doing it in school.” He tried to smooth the frayed parts. They fluffed back in place, remaining twisted out of shape. “He said it was just for fun.”

Mom sighed. Danny’s stomach dropped; she was disappointed, he knew, and he looked at the grass beneath his feet. Sunflower seeds pockmarked the soil where he had dropped a few in his hurry, visible among the blades. They formed a trail, and if he followed it, it led to the upturned basket weaved of bamboo and emptied of fruit.

Mom reached for the basket and lifted it. Fluttering and chirping came from beneath – before, a sign of his ingenuity; now, a source of his shame.

Danny watched the baby bird hop out of the shadow cast by the basket, spread its wings and dash into the sky. Another feather – also small and gray – drifted to where it had stood. 

“Sparrows live in the sky.” She reached a hand to his, unfurled his fingers and revealed the feather in his palm. He let it drift to the ground, joining its brethren. “Come, let’s head back in.”

There would be punishment, he knew. Maybe no TV for a week; Mom and Dad liked using it. 

Danny took her hand. As he passed under the arch of the front door, he spared another glance back at the sky, where the sparrow had long since disappeared, and wondered what it would take for him to fly.

**\- Prompt 20: Sky**


	21. ooze - Desiree, Tucker

The next time they met, he wasted no time whipping out an ecto-gun at her.

“Boy.” She crossed her arms. Her silver bangles clinked, ringing like bells across the quiet park. “Your suspicions are so easily roused.”

His hands did not shake, even as they wrapped around the handle of his gun. Such young hands and skinny wrists, steady on a weapon she’d learned was the vessel of one’s will upon others. The years she’d had after death had let her see it all – how humans have used it in the alleys of a city’s backstreets, in the carnage of countries’ wars, between the four walls of ordinary homes; here, even, in this field brushed with wildflowers and dew, like a canvas awaiting the aftermath of their coincidental crossing of paths.

“Desiree!” The sweat beading on his forehead betrayed the teen’s nerves, and thick glasses slid imperceptibly down the bridge of his nose. “Come any closer and I’ll shoot!”

“Yes, you’ve made that quite clear.” She didn’t drift close, but recognition sparked in her eyes. She straightened, leaned forward. “You’re Phantom’s friend. The one from the fair.”

“Name’s Tucker. Remember? Tucker Foley? You tried to–”

“Mm.” She let the name slip off her memory like mercury along glass. “Tell me, boy, do you have desires you’d like to fulfill? Another dose of ghost powers, perhaps? I could make you stronger, grant you the power you crave–”

“Forget it.” His finger tensed, although he didn’t pull the trigger. Smart; he, an adolescent human, was no match for her, the soul of a centuries-old genie. “I don’t crave power. Not after what you pulled. I don’t crave anything!”

Desiree inched closer, lurid eyes glinting. “That’s a bold claim. You think yourself to be that virtuous?”

“I said: don’t come any closer!” 

She obliged him. Her lips curved as one of his hands flew to his ear. 

“Guys,” she heard him hiss. “Could you hurry it up?”

Just as well. No more time to entice a wish out of him. She could simply leave, let him head on to school, if the bag on his back was any indication of his destination. But this boy... she eyed him, the way his weapon remained leveled at her, the way his eyes burned with righteous fury behind their black frames.

She thought of an era stretching into the annals of history. The world – her world – had been nothing but the mosaic walls of her sultan’s palace, the beauty her fellow women wore like coats of poison, the heat of hands running across her skin.

Did this child think he could be above her?

Desiree tilted her head, exposing the long column of her neck, the curves she knew ran down the top of her breasts. She caught his flickering eyes, set atop steadily flushing cheeks. Her palm upturned, fingers spread as if they cradled, between them, a secret whispered in lonesome mornings.

“I’ll grant you a lesson, boy.” Her timbre was low, a drop conspiratorial. “No man, young or old, craves nothing.”

The teen was frozen, a tremor running through his fingers, through his gun. 

It was enough. “Keep this in mind the next time you speak.” 

With that, she shot into the sky. Plasma fire didn’t follow her trail.

**\- Prompt 21: Ooze**


	22. isolation - Dani

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think there's something terrifying bout being isolated from a support circle, even if you've got ghost powers

The pockets of Dani’s jeans – Levi’s bestsellers, tailored to her ankles – were not empty as she had anticipated, but littered with evidence of her wanderlust along the streets.

She rubbed the pads of her thumbs over them. Kept count:

  * A Mars bar, approaching expiry, mushy from her regret of an impulse-buy
  * One folded dollar, plucked from between the oily grills of drainage gates a state away
  * A red bottle cap from the Coke she had snuck from a 7-11 (she’d felt terrible, afterwards; it was what she used to like drinking, but it wasn’t what Danny would’ve done)



Dani pulled out the bottle cap, ran her fingers across its scuffed circumference. Her mouth watered at the thought of cold, gassy liquid sliding down her throat, even as January’s chill bit into her skin, even as her stomach ached for a hot, fresh meal. 

She hesitated before a McDonald’s. Against the purplish hue of the evening sky, the warm light of the store spilled across the pavement just before her scruffy sneakers; inviting, taunting. Through the large windows, she saw a family of three leaving a table. Fries were scattered across the black tray, alongside a half-eaten Filet-O-Fish, and serviettes, soaked with spills of soda.

Dani’s grip around the bottle cap tightened. 

The son looked about ten, bundled in a down jacket. His mother held his small hand; his father pushed the door open, and with a gush of heated air – carried the scent of chicken, of salt; Dani gulped a breath, let it settle in her gut – they left the store, headed down the pavement she had come from. 

The father was speaking, ruffling the kid’s hair. She caught the tail end of his words– 

“–go eat somewhere else, okay?” 

Dani was staring at their backs. It wasn’t like they turned around or spared her a glance.

Why would they? She was not their child.

“Stupid.” The bottle cap dug into her palm. “Ridiculous–” Pivoting around, she stalked to the alley behind the corner of the McDonald’s. It was clean, apart from the souring smell of the garbage bin leaning against the brick wall. Unpleasant, but not rancid. They took care of this space, probably chased off any scavengers, but that wasn’t what she intended to do.

Not today. Not ever again.

With a quick glance around, she blinked out of visibility. 

Slipping through the wall, she stepped into the kitchen and sidestepped the staff, then she lifted for herself a full dinner – two burgers, an apple pie, and a big cup of Coke.

**\- Prompt 22: Isolation**


	23. call of lightning - Danny, Sam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> always liked amethyst ocean since i was a kid, but as i grew older and rewatched some episodes, even my non-shipping ass can't ignore the fact that gray ghost has a little more chemistry than canon's ultimate pairing :')

It was storming, a pour crashing into the concrete before his feet. It soaked the front of his sneakers, seeping into his socks, but Danny was craning his neck towards the black clouds rolling across the skies, toeing as close as he dared to the fringes of the mall’s protective cover.

Sam’s slender grip circled his wrist. It burned hot against his skin, grounding him from the cold gale railing against his cheeks. 

“Are you sure you want to go after her?” When he didn’t reply, her grip tightened. “Danny.”

Lightning flashed, illuminating the shadows of their faces. It was instinct to pull away and cover his ears, but there was no point trying to deafen himself with only one hand. 

In two heartbeats, thunder groaned – an ugly, moaning call, but it was a call, nonetheless.

“You heard her.” His chuckle was wry. “I know what Valerie sounds like when she’s screaming at ghosts.” He placed his hand over his wrist, gently prying her fingers away. They slid along the length of his own, lingering on his fingertips, then slipped away. The contact tingled like the aftereffect of a shock.

Across his back, his Lichtenberg scars ached.

“I gotta make sure she doesn’t go ghost hunting in this weather.” Another lightning struck, chased by the scream of thunder. “It’s too dangerous and– I’m sorry, for ditching you again.”

Sam’s hands dangled at her sides, empty and lax. “Okay.” She smiled, eyes hooded. “Good luck.”

A permission. Danny didn’t need it. He nodded anyway, and ran out into the streets splattered with rain.

**\- Prompt 23: Lightning**


	24. act - Kwan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's gotta be a reason why kwan can be genuinely nice yet act like a dick upon command in school; who's to say he doesn't do the opposite when at home? i imagined this drabble to be set during a family reunion with relatives during the Spring Festival, since i headcannoned the teen to be chinese, though any celebratory festival can be imagined.

It was an act.

“Kwan.” There it was, that lilt to his father’s voice. Kwan straightened his back and tuned into the conversation. “He is one of the star quarterbacks of Casper Hight.”

Praise flowed from around the table, the chatter from his relatives – although a few whose names and actual relationship with his family eluded him – of approval. 

“He and his friends spent many hours practising after school. They’re not deterred despite the ghost attacks,” his father continued. “Isn’t that right?”

Attention turned to the teen. Kwan grinned, heart warming, a hand going to his neck. “We all had to work hard if we wanted to win the season’s finals.”

“What a humble son,” said one of his aunts.

“A terrific boy,” commended an uncle. 

Kwan didn’t mention the warning his coach had given him for helping Dash shove a nerd around in the toilets. His father didn’t bring up his grades, and steered the topic away when one of his aunts began the same process with her daughter. Nobody brought up the screaming match between him and his mother, which must have echoed from their basement.

Kwan didn’t remember what they had been arguing about, except that it was loud, and vitriol had spewed from their mouths and gestures. The early visitors heard it, they must have, and word had no doubt gone around. He had caught lingering glances from the adults when they had been mingling around the dinner table. Looks of concern, no doubt, but nobody was keen to ruin the celebratory atmosphere.

Later, the family of three would leave his grandmother’s house. The festivities would come to an end, the decorations taken down and put into storage, and Kwan would return to Casper High – fall in line with the A-Listers, flunk through his exams, and try not to piss off his parents. 

Still, the act was nice while it lasted.

**\- Prompt 24: Mask**


	25. fate - Danny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set during Memory Blank. that ep was messed up, yo

Fate. A stupid concept. Fate didn’t make him stumble into the portal; he, clearly dumber than his sister, brought his friends down when he shouldn’t have. “Do not enter without adult supervision,” said Mom, said Dad, said the black print on yellow paper blue-tacked to the lab’s door. And yet, his feet walked. His feet tripped. His hand pressed the switch.

Fate didn’t bring Vlad Masters to him; the old man inserted himself into their lives, planned and plotted and let his schemes skuttle in his brain. Top 50 eligible bachelors, Top 100 influential people, Fortune 500 company owner – he could be anything. Have anyone. He chose this: a football team, a woman and a boy.

Fate. What a way for people to absolve themselves of responsibility. 

Yet, as he crumpled onto the tiles of the lab, wrecked by spasms in his fingers and twitches in his toes, his best friend’s – beautiful, determined, terrified – expression awash with a bile-toxic green glow from the  _ thing _ behind him, Danny thought perhaps there was merit to the concept.

After all, what but cruel fate could have led him to die– not once, but twice?

**\- Prompt 25: Break**


	26. philo v engineering on the campus grounds - Vlad, Jack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during Vlad, Maddie and Jack’s college years. It cracks me up to think of Vladdie as a philo kid, he’d be that one guy who re-interprets old texts just so they fit his worldview and be adamant he’s right ajaskdansd

Jack Fenton was a strange man.

This information wasn’t new. All of UW-Madison knew his name, his face, his demeanor. Professors were courteous, students were polite, but both spared no effort befriending him. Who wanted to be embarrassed by his ignorance and bumbling about, especially when Jack himself seemed impervious to shame?

Vlad flipped to another page of his reading. “Do not waste the remaining part of your life in thoughts about other people,” droned Marcus Aurelius in Vlad’s copy of _Meditations_ , “when you are not thinking with reference to some aspect of the common good.”

Marcus Aurelius didn’t know Jack Fenton, thought Vlad, but he underlined the quote anyway. Then, he thought about the common good.

“Jack.” He set down his pen and titled his head at the man in question. “Do you know what they’re saying about you?”

Across the table, Maddie looked up from her textbook and shot him a dirty look. Why was she so concerned? A man had the right to be made aware of his social status, and it was for the student body’s good if he gained some EQ. It had been Maddie’s idea to approach him, anyway, and Vlad had known her long enough to tell it hadn’t been entirely out of kindness; there was a spark in her eyes that watched Jack Fenton. It told Vlad she was curious about the man’s mind, and her curiosity niggled at his own. 

The duo sat around a wooden table now, one of the many benches erected around the campus’ courtyard. Jack, on the other hand, was squatted on the uneven pebbled ground, fiddling with a Lego robot he’d supposedly been working on for the past two weeks. Vlad was no engineering major, but even he could tell the robot—if it could even be called that—shouldn’t look like a behemoth of mismatched parts the height of his shin.

Jack turned to them. The robot was dwarfed in his shadow. “That Jack Fenton is a genius in the making!” he said, and laughter bubbled from his throat. His great shoulders shook. “Ain’t that right, Mads?”

“Of course.” Maddie smiled, resting her chin in her palm.

Vlad thought it was indulgent, and rolled his eyes. “A genius—”

A click came from the robot.

Vlad squinted at it. It remained still. “Did you hear—”

Then, the robot unfurled in a series of clicks and whirs, produced a pair of arms that ended in three-pronged claws, and stood up on two wheels.

“Cheese sticks!” Vlad gaped. Jack whooped, all 200 pounds of a man leaping into the air. Then Maddie laughed along, and Jack pulled her into a hug. They high-fived.

“Told ya, V-man!” Jack clapped the other man on his back, nearly face planting the latter into his reading. The quote he’d underlined earlier sprung out at him.

“Common good,” it mocked.

Philosophy is useless, thought Vlad.

Jack’s cheer carried across the courtyard, and when Vlad looked up, the man was cradling his invention to his broad chest like the proud father of a deformed mechanical baby. From the other benches, heads of fellow undergrads turned to them, to Jack, their curiosity palpable. Maddie, Vlad discovered, was watching the big man too. Her violet eyes were wide.

Oblivious, Jack patted his robot child on its head. He gave Vlad a giant grin. “Jack Fenton’s a genius. That’s what they all say!”

**\- Prompt 26: Strange**


	27. buried - Ember, Danny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many thanks to Alexa_Piper for the beta!

The ghost picked up the crunch of wet leaves long before she heard the twist of a cap.

“Can’t let a fight go even in a graveyard, dipstick?” she asked, refusing to turn around. Instead, she let the blue flames of her hair flare. 

A chuckle reached her ears. He was closer than she’d estimated, making her skin crawl. Ember regarded him then, eyeing the opened thermos in his loose grasp, and put distance between them.

Phantom sent her a sunny smile. “Depends,” he quipped. “You planning to serenade the dead?” His chest rose and fell as he spoke and a rosy tint colored his cheeks from the wintery air. The boy hadn’t even transformed into his ghost.

“This is my grave,” she snapped.

Ignoring his startled ‘oh’ and nervous flicks of his gaze towards her tightening grip around her guitar’s neck, she jabbed a finger at the headstone. It was a pretty thing, silver-gray and clean, unobtrusive among the mess of tombs that sprouted from the field on which the ghost and human stood. Before it lay a bouquet of carnations, its petals browned and damp.

“Sorry,” offered Phantom, hesitantly capping his thermos and sliding it into his backpack. His smart tongue seemed at a loss, and he gestured at her headstone, at the cross atop its base. “You, uh, you’re Christian?”

“My mom is,” she said, plucking at a string on her guitar. It twanged in the silence that blanketed them. 

What was she doing? 

She turned the question to him. “What are  _ you  _ doing here?”

“Visiting my grandparents.” He nodded to the small hill behind them, beyond where the iron gates to the cemetery stood guard. “My ghost sense went off, and uh, y’know.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She waved a hand. “I ain’t gonna be long.”

He shifted his feet, blue eyes drawn to the headstone where her real name and years were etched, after a discernible conflict of trying to look away.

How human, she thought, tickled by the act.

“My parents are with me,” he said finally, frowning up at her. “Don’t start any funny business and I won’t lead them here.”

“You got my word, babypop.” Two fingers intertwined and slid across her chest, and she sent him a lazy smile. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Phantom snorted at her pun – ironic – and made his getaway. His disappearance was eager and far more conspicuous than his entry, sneakers stomping all over the twigs and grass in his way, before petering off as he rejoined his family.

He  _ had  _ been trying to sneak up on her. Flattered, her flames blazed.

He had also offered up the whereabouts of the city’s ghost hunters, which Ember thought was generous. Delightfully naive. Because truly, her music was far from funny. It had been her life’s work, after all, one her mom once endlessly praised her for. The ghost had faith she still would, even if her daughter was now skull, ribs and femurs – buried six feet under, beneath a cross and aging flowers.

A pat on her headstone later, Ember shot off towards the downtown of Amity Park, her guitar in her hands and a melody on her tongue.

**\- Prompt 27: Buried**


	28. dinner conversations - Valerie, Damon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pre canon!

Here Valerie was, dressed to the nines in a A&F tee and slim jeans, and Dad brought her to the Nasty Burger.

“Don’t you kids like this joint?” he asked, over a mouthful of burger.

“There are literally hundreds of other cafes.” She flicked a speck of fry off the table with a finger, and imagined it was like how Dash and the boys punted their football into the goal post – all their pent-up fury bundled into a dense, speeding mass – though she didn’t know where her goal was. The vast expanse of greasy linoleum, maybe.

Out of stray fries, she drummed her fingers on the table top.

Dad stopped chewing. “I just thought it might be good for the two of us. We haven’t spent enough time together lately.”

“We saw each other for breakfast.”

“That’s not what I meant, sweetheart,” he said slowly.

“I know that.” She also knew she was contradicting herself, so she grabbed the soda that had been sitting on the table untouched and sucked its straw. The gassy liquid hurt as it went down her throat. Tears sprung to the corners of her eyes, and her hand gripped the can more tightly, slippery with condensation.

_Sorry_ , she wanted to say. Almost did, but her tongue couldn’t form the words over the lump in her throat. 

Dad pressed serviettes into her hand. Kinda ridiculous, since she could just wipe those tears away. Would have, typically. She’d just swallowed it wrong, too quickly. 

Valerie took the serviettes anyway. Pressed them against her eyes.

“I just want us to spend more time together,” murmured Dad.

“I know.” The tissues were still pressed over her eyes, so she didn’t have to look at her own burger on the table or find out if more tears would stain the paper.

_You don’t know, don’t know Mom loved– how would you have known? You never came home._

She shoved those thoughts into a corner of her mind. Imagined locking them away in a tiny box, punting it and the key out of an imaginary window that led out of her head. Or maybe just the key; if she chucked both out someone would find it, and open it for her. Like a Pandora’s box. Picturing this almost made her giggle.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” Dad asked. When she didn’t respond, he tried again. “It’s okay if you don’t want to finish this. It’s greasy, for a really late dinner. It’d probably give you a stomachache or just make you uncomfortable–”

_He’s trying_ , she thought.

It wouldn’t make up for lost time. It wouldn’t coalesce into the empty space between them, wouldn’t bring someone back from the dead, not even as a ghost. 

_He’s trying._

Valerie removed the tissues from her face. There were damp smudges on it, and she wiped the condensation from her other hand onto it, then crumpled it in her fist. “Can we?”

“…and that would be terri–” Dad stopped, refocusing on her. “You mean, eat elsewhere?” 

“Yeah.”

“Of course, sweetheart.”

He smiled at her, and she felt a little knot in her chest loosen. “There’s this place down the street. I’ve never been there. I heard they have real sushi.”

“Real sushi?” Her father laughed. The sound was nice. “How can I say no to that?” 

**\- Prompt 28: Diner**


	29. the sacrifices of children - Danny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set in early season 1! danny deals with aftermaths

The first time she swung the barrel end of her gun at him, his joints locked up, his mouth went dry, and the ectoblasts in his palms sizzled and popped into nothing. 

“Mom.” 

The wind in the distance between them ripped his word away, and the blast ripped through his stomach.

He didn’t know if it was his stomach for sure – maybe it was his diaphragm, or his kidneys; he was a physics-lover and knew jack shit about physiology – but it rendered him unable to fly. So, he heaved himself out of her line of fire, running for the fall-painted trees rimming the park. The oranges and reds of the foliage burned bright like the afterimage of the white noon sun, superimposed before his vision as he ducked beneath the dark cover of the leaves.

As he trampled further past the branches and twigs that bit at the skin beneath his jumpsuit, this niggled at the back of his mind: he was a ghost, he could turn intangible; he should try. But the thought felt distant compared to the loud crumple of leaves – bled dry, ripped open by the force of their boots against them – and the head-pounding need to get away – _from Mom_ – that he shoved it aside and twisted his head about, praying for a place to hide.

Nothing was making sense. All the trees looked featureless, smears of vibrant autumn color against harsh, dry bark, towering over him. The canopy let in smatterings of light, and his gaze leapt from sunlit patch to sunlit patch, until as if God had given him an answer, a low-hanging tree swollen with leaves lay just out of reach of the light.

White-gloved fingers dug into the bark, and he pulled himself up, biting hard into his lip as he glanced down and strained not to stain the trunk with his ghostly blood. It would be evidence. He couldn’t leave evidence. 

The tree was almost twice his height, and up he scrambled, feeling as though he were reliving his childhood, how Mom had encouraged him to climb up trees with Jazz in another spot in this very park, hands braced at his back in case he fell. He couldn’t not think about it as he made his way up, but when his hand reached for the leaves he grit his teeth and willed himself intangible.

It worked. He crumpled into the indent atop the trunk, feeling his breaths coming in quick. 

And then, oh and then, did the pain set in.

It struck him like a snake in waiting, coldness slithering into his extremities, tears and sweat stinging his eyes. But he didn’t dare close them; he let his vision swim and stay on the crisscrossing of branches and leaves above him. He pressed his lips together, didn’t dare breathe, and strained his hearing for the crunch of footsteps below. 

Leaves crackled.

Was that her? Or was that the wind above?

He wondered, then, if he should turn back human. His mother might have brought along his father’s ghost detection device; she had shown it to him over toast and orange juice that morning. Little hand-held devices with indicators that glowed red in response to ectoplasmic activity within a kilometer’s radius.

But a tiny, wild voice pounded this thought into his head: if he released his hold over his ghost, the ectoplasm would transform into blood, and the blood would sink into the fabric of his white shirt. How could he return to his mother, whom he had abandoned in the park in search of the ghost? How could he look her in the eyes and stammer a lie about why flakes of blood clung to his skin, why its metallic whiff permeated his clothes?

_Whose blood is this?_ He imagined her crying. _Who hurt you, Danny?_

No. It wasn’t worth a little ectoplasm lost, not when his body could now easily make more.

With the comfort of a decision made, he relaxed into the rough bark against his shoulders, let the branches surround him like the bars of a cage, and prayed he would not be found.

**\- Prompt 29: Heat**


	30. three families - Danny

Secrets festered in the cracks of Fenton Works’ walls. They were filled in with ignorance, then painted over with deceit. Once upon a time there hadn’t been that many; now, they were everywhere he turned, and he’d long since forgotten which ones had existed before his accident, and which had arrived after. 

Malice lined the edges of the Mansons’ furniture. The corners of the dining table nipped at his hip, the legs of chairs stubbed his toes. The food glistened with spices that burned his tongue, and the walls hung with paintings framed in heavy gold. 

At the Foleys’ two-storey house, the wooden boards creaked as he walked up the porch. The gentle fan whirred, scattering the scent of meatloaf and hot, melting cheese. It mingled with laughter on the lumpy couch, with the crackle of Star Trek from the television.

Cards splayed across the furred rug, his best friend crowed his win as his parents joined in. Danny bit into his dinner, a warm weight in his stomach, and a lightness in his heart.

**\- Prompt 30: Family**


	31. target practice - Danny, Maddie

The pistol in his hand was lighter than he remembered. He had held it once, last summer, when his mother wrapped his fingers around its handle and raised it to a little cardboard target. A blob-shaped cutout – scissored from a paper box and spray painted green – had sat on a metal rod extending from the lab’s wall, its twin black eyes and an O-shaped mouth staring back at him. Danny had scrawled those on with a sharpie, taking special care to color in the eyes.

If it had been a normal gun, he imagined his finger pulling the trigger, the bullet bursting out under his command, towards the little ghost. If he were a good shot, he would have given the target a third eye.

As it was, that gun hadn’t been normal. Neither was the one he was holding now, but this time, he remembered its blaster fire scorching his skin. Scars littered his chest, his shoulder, his thigh. They ached.

“I don’t think I want to do this.”

In the periphery of his vision, his mother peered at him. He didn’t want to know what her expression was, hidden beneath goggles and hazmat. “It’s good to keep your skills sharp, sweetie. When was the last time you had any practice?”

This morning, thought Danny, with the Box Ghost.

Then, a second thought came to mind: last year. The correct thought.

He shrugged, letting his arms fall to his sides.

His mother answered for him anyway. “It was before you started high school, right? Danny.” Her tone dropped, and he turned to her in response to her solemness. “The ghosts aren’t harmless. The attack at your school today? You could’ve been hurt.”

He had things to say about Box Ghost’s ability to do harm, then he realized she’d likely been talking about Phantom. “But I wasn’t.”

“You’ll never know. It’s important to be prepared.”

Her eyes were still hidden, but her lips were downturned, pressed together. Sighing, Danny turned back towards the cardboard target. It was a misshapen little thing, barely coated in light green. He didn’t remember who had made it, and he decided it didn’t really matter.

He raised the pistol and fired. Then, the next target popped out of the wall, so he did it again, and again, and pretended he didn’t notice the way charred holes littered the remnants of cardboard on the floor.

**\- Prompt 31: Free Day**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't believe i finished dannymay :') thank you so much to all who've read this. i appreciate you like no other <3


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